This date, X years ago my alleged father died of cancer at home. It was right before my 16th birthday. Trust me, the image of your father's naked corpse being wiped down by a hospice nurse is not something you want to remember.
There is a big chance here i'll give you a little too much information.
Should the doctor have caught the melanoma sooner? Definitely. He had a disgusting large and misshapen mole on his left arm. When he originally asked the doctor about it, she said something to the effect of "don't worry about it". Of course, she never even wrote his concerns in her notes. A few months later, he bumped the mole and it started to bleed. He had the mole removed, and of course it was cancerous. Then you get the whole 75% chance they got it. All well and good until it made it to his lymph nodes. Another 70% chance they stopped the cancer. Wrong again.
That is basically when i realized that doctors aren't that smart and they don't really care (or even listen to their patients). Many doctors actually hold their patients in contempt and think they are idiots. When you figure out that healthcare is a volume industry, that changes your views. The only thing that matters to them are visitation fees and drug kickbacks.
Then there was a blur of radiation and chemotherapy that didn't really work. At one point it spread to his bones. He broke a rib sneezing and one of his legs (was infested with cancer). Eventually a brain tumor. Although it is kind of tragic, in a way, it is funny when your father tries to talk into a banana. Dementia kind of took over. Kind of sucks when your father can't remember your name. Last came a coma, and death quickly followed.
i think it was between 12:30 and 3AM when the nurse told my siblings and i to say goodbye to my father. What do you say to a corpse? Nothing, i don't believe in an afterlife anyway. After that was a blur. Relatives coming to the house, my 16th birthday, his funeral. i hate funerals and vowed to myself i would never go to another funeral again including my own (actually that was after the death of an acquaintance's brother).
One trait i got from him was that he had to be early for everything. Death was no exception (especially considering the time frames doctors gave him at various stages).
Those were the facts of the story, but how did it impact me?
i was an overly emotional boy and always hated myself for it. When i was younger, i used to have occasional nightmares that my mother would die. i guess you could call me more of a "momma's boy". i didn't know the parent who died would be my father instead. As a kid, you think you dad is big strong and almost invincible.
This wasn't my first experience with death. A teacher in the 2nd or 3rd grade, that covered my class for reading died while going in for a medical procedure. Then a girl i didn't really know in my grade died in a car crash (i think 5th or 6th grade). Then it was an older former minor league baseball player my father's church would make us visit. Not sure i'd chalk up my reactions to these events as anything other than superficial.
If he lived longer, we definitely would have butted heads. He was religious and i stopped believing in god when i was 12. After my father died i continued going to a church i didn't believe in to placate my mother. i swore more than a little. He was not a fan. i was bigger, stronger, and faster than him.
i learned my father had cancer the summer before i started high school. The first couple of treatments, you think it is no big deal. Then you have all the well-wishers from places like church saying/praying that your father will get better. Some act almost positive of their prognostications. One of the well-wishers offered to help so she could steal his prescription pain medicine. It turns out, all the well-wishing was ultimately useless. More false hope than reality. Then i had to deal with other people far more than i would like (eating dinner at someone else's house when my father had a medical procedure/treatment) and the like. People brining meals into your home, not as a sign of kindness, but as a type of obligation.
i think i cried myself to sleep a few times, not because i was sad my father was dying, but because i knew this would screw up my future. Kiss goodbye to the having a license, a car, a "McJob", a girlfriend, and teenage premarital sex (my father wouldn't have approved of that). That kind of stuff adds up - especially the license/car and job further in life. Starting after college with a blank slate is much worse than a "joe job" slate with references.
If i'm being honest, i always kind of resented the time my father spent on boy scouts and church. i felt that was him prioritizing his outside interests over his family. So, it is possible i did say some mean things about him to third parties when he had cancer, but they didn't have the context. i might have, at one point, said that cancer was a form of karmic retribution for what i thought was prioritizing outside interests over family. Though phrased much worse for an outsider to hear.
After he got cancer, he was a little better in that regard. He loved camping, so we went on a couple of final trips (one to Scenic Beach State Pake in Seabeck, might be remembering wrong), the last trip was to the Northern Cascades. That was a short trip due to rain flooding the tent and getting everything wet
Yes, he did some things with me. He wanted to integrate me more in things like scouting. i thought that in order to fit in you have to shit talk people. The only one i knew in scouts was my father. So, at times, i disparaged him for being fat ("fatso plus his first name"), not like a "husky" boy like me was in a position to talk. He did take me to play church basketball and stuff like that. Were my views completely fair to him? No. After my first 40-hour work week, i wondered how the hell he did as much as he did.
i know i was a disappointment to him. i am terrible in social situations. i don't have a lot of confidence and have an underlying perfectionist streak that tells me i'll never be good enough - so i don't try. Then i was kind of as the cowboys would say, onery. There were times he'd get ticked off at me when i had a talk in church and i'd skip it and walk home 5 miles instead. i was never comfortable doing that kind of thing (or most social situations in general).
When i learned he was dying, i was secretly pissed off that he was abandoning me and all of the things stated previously i was counting on him for. i knew my mother would not be great at any of those. She essentially became a zombie for a couple of years after his death. My younger brother, was not much better.
So, there i was a 16-year-old high school sophomore. Smarter than the average, though living a life, i rightly thought, that was going nowhere. Turns out, i'm still just running out the clock.
i generally suck at saying goodbyes, especially to the few people i care about. i often wondered why i wasn't sadder that my father died. Some of it may have been that it was spread out over time (and a lot of listening to George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice Volume 1: especially the song "They Won't Go When I Go").
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